“The Not So Global Internet”

Fred Wilson writes about how frustrating it is when companies break the internet:

We are in the caribbean this week celebrating the year end holiday with friends and family. Yesterday we installed a VPN client so that the Gotham Gal could do some online shopping on a website that only sells to users in the US. We also installed a bittorrent client so that a friend of my son could watch films he had rented on iTunes before he came down here.

The latter experience was particularly frustrating. My son’s friend rented the films on iTunes in NYC, flew down here, then when he tried to play them, they would not play because of IP blocking, but the rental clock (24 hours) started ticking anyway and he lost the rental rights he had paid for.

I buy all my movies through Apple TV and am strongly opposed to piracy. But I bet many people who pirate would be happy to pay if it were easier to buy and download content.

Here’s a service I’d love to see. For every Bittorrent file, create a corresponding Bitcoin wallet. When people download the torrent file, encourage them to pay a fee to the Bitcoin wallet. The creator of the content gets to take the Bitcoin. I bet this method would generate considerable revenue for content creators.